Port-of-Entry

The General View: U.S. hard-surface imports continued on the zig-zag road for 2022, with April’s $417.8 million in customs values dropping 4.2% from March. That’s still 3.2% ahead of April 2021, although that’s not saying much with the month’s inflation rate of 6.2% (minus food and energy). The Expected: Quartz slabs led all sectors with $138.5 million in value in April, and that’s 6.9% behind March. The 17.4-million ft² arriving in U.S. ports-of-entry in April trails March totals by 5%. The Unexpected: Granite went from first to second on the natural-stone values list in April, with its $57.3 million overtaken by marble’s $60.3 million. The last time that happened? July 1990, back in the days of George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev. (Granite remains ahead of marble in volume, with 96,000 metric tons to 66,480 metric tons, respectively.) The Strange: The success story of April belongs to travertine. The long-suffering sector showed a 20% improvement from March 2021 in value. Next Month: The Ukraine/Russia war seemed to take a double-digit bite out of porcelain imports from Italy and Spain, where the end of Ukrainian clay supplies sent manufacturers scrambling. And, maybe it’s a last gasp, but the most-improved performance by a major porcelain exporter in April turned out to be … Ukraine.